I'm going to say my piece about this, firstly, I'm really sick of Tau vs Tau and Fighting Tau general. Mostly because Tau have for some reason better boarding than Orks and the ability to swarm you in durable escorts. So I came up with a list of things with the Tau that should change:

The boarding attack upgrade for the manta should be reduce to one (two for the battleship) per wave not manta.

Energy shield upgrade should be moved onto the Manta because they need it more than the fighters ever will.

The Experimental Railgun shouldn't piece shields and should ignore any sort of damage mitigation for it

The Dhow upgrade should be replaced with automated refuelling. (these things are far too durable to be something you get for free, additionally Kor'or'vesh ships are not designed to carry dhows.)

To replace the dhows you get the Nicassar Caravan as an auxiliary ship choice which is four eject-able dhows on a rig with a lot of firepower.

The price of the Custodian should be reduced to 350 points this at least allows you to field two Protectors along side it. While the Stronghold should be bumped up to 280~ points (it's a battleship so it should be priced like a battleship)

What do you think?

Why the boarding changes? Tau currently have THE best boarding capacity in the game, despite lacking Lightening strikes, if specced for it, a Fire caste favour Protector with level 3 Tio'Ve and level 3 Ethereal plus upgrade is near impossible to board while at the same time they can potentially board 7 times a cycle (before the boarding ability reloads, counting what mantas bring to the table), while also dealing damage with bombers and seekers, setting numerous fires also over the placeThere is something wrong when you can do this when your faction has an anathema to fighting at close range.

Why the Dhow changes?they have 400 effective hit points with 50 armour all round and 24 potential damage on their broadsides, people like to match this with seeker missiles and extra turret range and turrets for the ultimate chaff unit and they get this basically for free. the IN reinforcement ability has nothing on this and neither do any of the other factions get the ability to bring in extra escorts like this.

Why the Custodian point reduction?The Custodian is NOT THAT GOOD. it's a big juicy target with not much mobility with firepower most other faction battleships can laugh at.

Last edited by Aquilar on 06 October 2016, 01:24, edited 3 times in total.

The warden class escort ships have no ether drives, and such, need to be towed into battle using gravitic hooks.

I think you overestimate how useful the dhows are for anything but absorbing fire. Sure one thing we need to fix is the water caste dhow spam, but the dhows that are towed shouldn't be done anything about.

As for boarding, if the tau invest in vespid communion helm, fire caste favor and full level tio've they gain a grand total of +29 troop value +3 everytime they board, but they''ve essentially wasted one favor, one upgrade and six crew points. They can still only have a maximum of 4 boarding actions, don't know where you get the remaining 3. I do agree that tau should be a bit weaker against boarding, maybe a middle point between eldar and imperials, but shouldn't be completely handicapped at it, remember they have no lightning strikes, that is a big factor.

TheGoldenChicken wrote:The warden class escort ships have no ether drives, and such, need to be towed into battle using gravitic hooks.

Warden Gunship actually do have Jump drives, they're just short ranged hence they need to piggie back into battle most of the time, if it's for patrol, they perfectly capable of doing it on their own. or you use the more illogically expensive castellan too as a replace.

I'll just stress this point, Kor'or'vesh ships do not have the capacity to carry dhows, dhows are simply too large to fit regardless of how you can justify it, they more than triple the mass of Wardens, and don't expect them to fit inside that Custodian either.

and no I'm not overestimating the usefulness of dhow, they tank a lot of damage and they can give it out, especially if you manage to get them inside the oppositions formation. 400 effective HP and 24 damage on the broadside, this is the best escort in the game because it's such a pain get off the field, especially in Tau VS Tau.

I'm going to have to point out that a lot of the Kor'or'vesh ships are over priced for they do, with the desired changes, they'll definitely be over priced.

TheGoldenChicken wrote:The warden class escort ships have no ether drives, and such, need to be towed into battle using gravitic hooks.

Warden Gunship actually do have Jump drives, they're just short ranged hence they need to piggie back into battle most of the time, if it's for patrol, they perfectly capable of doing it on their own. or you use the more illogically expensive castellan too as a replace.

I'll just stress this point, Kor'or'vesh ships do not have the capacity to carry dhows, dhows are simply too large to fit regardless of how you can justify it, they more than triple the mass of Wardens, and don't expect them to fit inside that Custodian either.

and no I'm not overestimating the usefulness of dhow, they tank a lot of damage and they can give it out, especially if you manage to get them inside the oppositions formation. 400 effective HP and 24 damage on the broadside, this is the best escort in the game because it's such a pain get off the field, especially in Tau VS Tau.

I'm going to have to point out that a lot of the Kor'or'vesh ships are over priced for they do, with the desired changes, they'll definitely be over priced.

Warhammer 40k wiki says they have no ether drives, and such are towed into battle, lexicanum says their ether drives are extremely limited and thus are towed into battle.

Again, lexicanum says that the nicassar lack proper intestellar capacity, and thus are often towed into battle.

The dhow might have too strong shields which should be reduced to a 100, yes, but apart from that, they aren't really THAT useful if not massed. Their broadside DPS is 3, spread over two shots of 12 damage every 8 seconds, the warden has the same DPS, only a third of it is ion cannon DPS, and all of it is front bearing. Now granted the dhow has the capacity to shoot both broadside batteries at a time, but this very rarely happens. I started off taking dhows because due to their stats they sounded like the best shit ever, but after actually using them in battle, I've found that they are extremely bad if not massed.

I do however agree, that many ships like the custodian or the warden emissary are overpriced, other than their gravitic hook ships I think they're fine.

TheGoldenChicken wrote:Warhammer 40k wiki says they have no ether drives, and such are towed into battle, lexicanum says their ether drives are extremely limited and thus are towed into battle.

Again, lexicanum says that the nicassar lack proper intestellar capacity, and thus are often towed into battle.

The dhow might have too strong shields which should be reduced to a 100, yes, but apart from that, they aren't really THAT useful if not massed. Their broadside DPS is 3, spread over two shots of 12 damage every 8 seconds, the warden has the same DPS, only a third of it is ion cannon DPS, and all of it is front bearing. Now granted the dhow has the capacity to shoot both broadside batteries at a time, but this very rarely happens. I started off taking dhows because due to their stats they sounded like the best shit ever, but after actually using them in battle, I've found that they are extremely bad if not massed.

I do however agree, that many ships like the custodian or the warden emissary are overpriced, other than their gravitic hook ships I think they're fine.

I don't need the Dhow being nerfed itself, it's more like it needs another of way being brought into battle because currently you just use them as free cannon fodder which the nicassar are definitely not. a Nicassar Caravan or Rig would be a nice addition to bring them to battle instead of a emissary or more ridiculously the Custodian.

And to stress it again, the Kor'orvesh ships can not carry them, the older Explorer and Merchant Classes could. This is more of a thematic problem I have with dhows, Tau would never willingly take these things to battle for a variety of reasons, sure dhows are capable of operating independently for very long periods of time, Nicassar don't make very good combatants and don't integrate well into the tau military so most of the ships the nicassar provide are for scouting, they also the Tau's only Psykers and we should all know the Imperium/chaos just jumps at the chance of killing psykers, especially xeno pyskers.

And I forget the address previously the tau boarding number, this is the total number of times a tau ship can board though the use of both mantas and their boarding action in a single cycle of the boarding action.

Eliminating the Dhow summon for the Water caste favor would limit its utility quite a bit - if that happens, it would be nice to see it get back the removal of the "mercenary" trait, and possibly something else (blip identification or increased detection range, making it similar to the Inquisitorial favor, would be incredibly useful for Tau since they lack long-range sensor capability, but this might be a bit imbalanced).

I'd love to see a Nicassar caravan with dhows, just for variety. As I remember, the caravans were slow but had reasonable firepower.

I'd support making the experimental railgun non-AoE, and eliminating its shield-piercing capability. Its long range and lack of counters (no visible indicator, unlike nova cannons) makes it pretty hard to counter. It's also quite effective against stationary targets like space stations and platforms.

The fighter shield upgrade is fine, given that it replaces the cooldown (better fighters less often is about equal to fighters more often); the Manta boarding upgrade is nice to have because it gives Tau a way to win in data recovery despite their low speed and lack of lightning strikes.

As for Tau having too much boarding capability, I disagree. Tau have every reason to not get close, and kitting out for boarding has a substantial opportunity cost.

Edited to add: the Nicassar dhow upgrade could be replaced with a torpedo speed or turning radius upgrade; I generally agree that it's odd for Tau ships to be ferrying Nicassar around, given that the Kor'or'vesh ships weren't ever able to in the tabletop game.

can anyone explain to me why people are still saying tau have few detection ability's ?they have scanner upgrade to 7.5k like everyone elsethey have augur probes like everyone elsethey have augur beacons like everyone else only the imperium with both the emperor, widowmaker and the inquisition have better scannersplease explain to me why people keep saying that tau have bad scannersthey dont

Ashardalon wrote:can anyone explain to me why people are still saying tau have few detection ability's ?they have scanner upgrade to 7.5k like everyone elsethey have augur probes like everyone elsethey have augur beacons like everyone else only the imperium with both the emperor, widowmaker and the inquisition have better scannersplease explain to me why people keep saying that tau have bad scannersthey dont

Well, to be fair, only IN have race specific detection tools.

But regarding Tau, non air caste Tau are slow (same as IN/Orks), but they don't have IN's detection capabilities and Orks at least can blindfire torps (and novas if they have the favour, but to be fair I think Orks have problems with enemy stealth too). Fast factions do not need detection as much as they're less vulnerable to stealth kiting.

As for the thread, I only agree with the fact that railguns need changes, but removing its shield piercing will make it rather weak vs everyone but Eldar and still OP vs Eldar. i'd rather restore it to 100 damage and add firing delay and an indicator to make it more of a skillshot, so you need some setup to use it.

As for Tau boarding - yes, Tau can have a lot of boarding upgrades and can be pretty good at it if they take them all, but tbh full boarding Tau build is pretty weak and i haven't seen it being used very well in MP at all actually. Earth caste railgun spam is much more common and annoying.

2nd problematic build is stealth alloy + water caste, but I think it's just a new iteration of the same old thing e.g. kiting with Eldar on defensive cruiser clash. There's nothing wrong with stealth alloy on its own, it's just that no objective cruiser clash makes silly things possible. Maybe make it only last first 5 min, it should be enough if you use it to ambush rather than abuse it.

Custodian is fine at 400p since it comes with free escorts. I really want an option to not bring any esorts on gravihooks tough, a ~300p Custodian with no escorts would be neat.

Auxilaries need some love, Demiurg are really bad now when they can't take water caste favour anymore (and bad for ranked anyway due to crazy upgrade costs relative to their power level)

The Manta's don't get an extra hit point despite being heavily armed, armoured and shielded and being twice the size of a thunderhawk.

Nerfing the XV-46 upgrade is to stop the ridiculousness of what the Custodian is capable of. If all those Mantas make it through and very likely quite a few will, the amount of havoc they reek on the target ship is insane, it can easily one shot a light cruiser or heavily cripple everything else. The fire caste favour makes it especially deadly.

As for boarding, Tau can add a pretty epic amount of boarding protection and capable of having innately better boarding than most factions without having to spend a favour to do it. Mont'Ka has 400% critical hit chance to targeted systems for BOTH weapons batteries AND boarding actions along with a -5 to troop strength, the fire caste favour makes this even worse with the automatic fire crit. For a faction doesn't like being in close range they sure have a lot of stuff make boarding worth while.

The Custodian is highly over priced compared to everyone else's battleships, it certainly doesn't have the range and detection to compete with something like the emperor class as all it's power is in being a carrier, and it's weapon batteries are fairly mediocre in comparison.If the Custodian had a detection radius of 10k then it maybe worth being priced like it's TT version which costs 330, 420 with escorts.If you going to have a custodian in your fleet, your stuck with either a LC, 2 LCs, or an LC and a cruiser. where everyone else can (apart from spacemarines) can field a battleship and two battlecruisers and maybe an additional light cruiser. The Custodian and it's escort simple do not make up the difference, your outgunned and out skilled. This makes using the custodian without the air caste favour suicide.